


Pyra

by Luneshine



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Backstory, Childhood Memories, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Tieflings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 09:59:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17281931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luneshine/pseuds/Luneshine
Summary: Contracts are contracts, regardless of who made them. Consequences are consequences, regardless of how one tries to escape them. And devil blood is devil blood, regardless of parents' love.





	Pyra

**Author's Note:**

> Someone in a campaign my wife is running wanted some backstory written for her, as she's new to the game. I decided to write something for the first time in a while and sent her this. Meant to be relatively simple.

Your forehead aches. It’s a dull throb split into two spots that’s persisted for days now. Words are still foreign to you, at least when it comes to using them yourself, so all you can do is cry to let your parents know something is wrong. Your mother and father take turns holding you in the evening and at one point your father swipes something along your gums that burns. You cry harder, hiccuping from the intensity -- the pain isn’t in your mouth, you want to tell them. It’s your head!

“You said it’d work,” your father sighs in exasperation to your mother. She shakes her head.

You wake up the next morning with something dripping into your eyes and the crying shifts to screaming. The pain has come to a breaking point, your eyes _sting_ , and now it’s so hard to see!

Your mother bolts in immediately and scoops you up, examining you. Within the next moment, her expression drops, and even with your limited cognition, it makes your chest sink. You sniffle, staring up at her, and she takes you to the kitchen, where she wipes your head with a spare rag. It comes away red, and as soon as she’s done, you bury your face in her bosom, trembling.

“Arthur, dear. Get out of bed. We need to talk.”

* * *

 “Did it hurt them too?”

It’s nearly a year later when you sit on the wooden fence corralling your parents’ meager amount of livestock, legs swinging back and forth, and point at a small goat. It looks towards you with its rectangular pupils and bleats, making you jump and nearly fall off your perch. Its horns are mere stubs, barely-there, but undoubtedly present, and you can’t contain your curiosity.

Your father pauses, following your finger, and raises an eyebrow as he attempts to decipher your vague question. “Oh,” he finally says, understanding. “I don’t know, kiddo. They can’t talk, they just make noise...but they make noise at a lot of things, so we don’t always know what it means.”

“Hmmm…it hurt bad. I don’t want them to hurt.”

Your father looks away, then, out towards the sunset.

“I didn’t want you to hurt, either.” 

* * *

 “You know what word to listen for, right?”

You reach your mother’s mid-thigh now. She spares a glance down, kneading bread as an automatic motion as you as you clutch at her skirt. Your thoughts wander from the fact that you’ve been asked a question, and instead, you compare yourself to her in the afternoon sun. You both have shiny black hair, and yours gets longer every day. But her skin looks more like the warm red-brown of the earth, and yours is the purple of dusk. She clicks her tongue to get your attention, and you finally nod.

“Mmhm. Mar-jor-am.” You stumble over it, the syllables heavy in your mouth, but you feel a surge of pride when you see your mother’s smile once you get it out. There’s another difference...her teeth are nowhere near as sharp as yours! You’ve cut your lips and the insides of your cheeks so many times once they started growing in.

“That’s right, honey. Marjoram means you go to the trap door, and you don’t come out until you hear it again.”

You think about how you would like to make your mother smile like that again and lean against her with a sigh.

* * *

 

You lie in bed, staring at the ceiling. Sleep hasn’t come easily lately, and now, with your parents arguing in the room over, it seems even further away. You figure that your parents think you can’t hear them talking, that they assume you’re deep asleep, but the angry tone of your father’s voice cuts through the air.

“We wouldn’t have to worry about this if that old man wasn’t such a lewd bastard,” your father hisses through clenched teeth. “A child a generation all for some _company._ Could’ve been with any wench in town to ease the grief, but he had to be _extravagant_ about it.”

“Grief makes people do strange things. What’s done is done, and now we do what we can.”

You roll over in bed, pulling your blanket tighter around you. A pit sinks heavily into your stomach, one you can’t place words to. Later, when you drift off to sleep, you dream of being alone.

* * *

 Your mother is teaching you to harvest herbs from the garden today. You kneel in the dirt beside her, tiny bare hands ready to uproot at her say-so. She’s smiling again today, too, as she shows you how to carefully extract one plant without snapping the stems. A bright white light glimmers for no more than a second in the doorway, and with her fingers wrapped around a stem, her muscles tense all at once. She reminds you of the alley-cats you’ve seen in alleyways and the way they hunch when a bigger cat approaches them.

“Marjoram,” she says so quickly you can barely understand. You sit there, staring at her quizzically, and she says it again, urgently: “ _Marjoram.”_

You bolt through the door then, tripping over yourself as you scramble to the trap-door set in the floor on the far side of the house Neither your mother nor your father told you _what_ was happening when they used the signal word, only what to do. You manage to get the latch undone, and curl yourself up inside the small space under the floor. The room, if you can call it that, has walls of packed dirt and isn’t much more than a box set underground. It’s by no means comfortable, but you were told you be here, and you listen to your parents. You think that maybe, for another split second, the door glows with light just like the charm in the doorway did.

“Is it time?” You hear your father’s voice.

“Yes,” answers your mother, and then they’re both quiet.

After what you can only guess is a few minutes, the air grows cold. You can even feel it underground as it sinks deep into your bones. You begin to shake, and it only gets worse when you hear someone you don’t recognize. A woman, maybe younger than your mother, whose lilt makes you think of a thick syrup...but you didn’t hear her come in.

“Where is the child?”

“We told you, Rhiora. My wife lost the child before she was sixth months along. We have nothing to give you.”

Are they talking about you? You’re right here! You weren’t “lost”. Your parents are good people, aren’t they? They don’t lie. You know you’re not supposed to make any noise, though, so you stay silent, even with these thoughts looping in your mind.

The strange woman sighs dramatically, so loudly that you can hear it clear as day. “You know how a contract works, right? There are agreed-upon terms, and what I get is the first-born from each generation of the Llewyn clan. I would say I’m sorry that you got the shit end of the deal, but...I’m not, really. Just hand it over. I’ve waited too long.”

“ _We have nothing to give you.”_

“I’ll take _something_ if you don’t have a brat.”

You hear something hit the floor, a grunt from your father, a shriek from your mother, and your blood runs cold, colder than it had been from the air. There’s sobbing, then, too, and a loud _thunk_ against the trapdoor that makes the wood rattle.

Then nothing. Nothing. Nothing. An unbearable length of nothing.

You’re not sure how long has passed, but you try to push against the door. You didn’t hear “marjoram”, but you can’t stay down here forever. The door doesn’t budge at all, and you whimper, pushing harder.

“Mommy? Daddy?”

Push, push, _push._ You exert yourself until your muscles ache and you feel tears welling up behind your eyes. Why can’t you get out? They told you to go in the crawlspace, that it would be safe. Now you’re stuck, your parents aren’t there, something has happened...here come the tears. You cry and scream until your throat won’t let you anymore. 

* * *

 “It’d been down there for at least two days. Cruel of them, really. Should’ve sent it down the river when it was too young to know better. Even tried to ward the hole against evil so it couldn’t get out.”

You slowly come to. You’re not sure where you are, and the clothes you’re wearing aren’t yours, either. They’re stained, itchy rags, a far cry from the dresses your mother loved to make for you. Your throat is scratchy, and you’re thirstier than you’ve ever been. Two men are talking in the doorway of the cramped room you’re in. A quick glance around shows many other children asleep on cots, dressed the same way you are.

“It’s awake,” one of the men whispers.

“I’m not an it,” you mutter, looking at him with wide eyes as you try to take in the situation.

“Stop staring like that,” he says harshly, and the venom in his voice makes you physically recoil. “If you’re going to be kept here, at least learn some manners, you little monster.”

You remember blood in your eyes, your parents arguing, and the way you felt then. Loneliness and shame surge sharply in your chest.

You aren’t going home.


End file.
